Monday, December 2, 2013

Commerce or Community

Because the history of the United States is
comprised of contradictions (proclamations of liberty, for instance, are
coupled with the practice of slavery), it should come as little
surprise to find that the holiday of Thanksgiving – so steeped in
hyper-consumerism – itself derives from the rejection of a compelled
commercialism. This history is especially relevant today, as we consider
how to reconcile another crucial contradiction – the conflict between
commerce (the mercenary) and community (the common – that which is
shared).

Before the Reformation transformed much of
Europe, public and private life were in many respects determined by the
calendar of the Church – a calendar comprised of, among other things,
dozens of compulsory holidays and feast days. Not only were people
compelled to attend church services on these days, purchasing those
items employed in these holidays’ respective rituals was also
compulsory. Candles and knickknacks, and other religious bric-a-brac
(the cost of which, in the aggregate, was not insubstantial) had to be
purchased, irrespective of whether one wanted these items or not.

Rejecting this compulsory consumption for a life of
dogmatic austerity, the Puritans of the time eliminated not only feast
days and rituals, but all holidays from their religious practices.
Instead of Easter, Christmas, and the rest, simple days of thanks
(celebrating propitious events) and days of fasting (honoring the more
solemn occasions) were observed. And when they set sail to colonize
Plymouth, Massachusetts, the Pilgrims brought this approach to holidays
along.

It is worth remarking that the year 1621, the year of
the Pilgrims’ legendary first Thanksgiving dinner, was also the year
that the extremely powerful commercial enterprise, the Dutch West India
Company (which would begin to colonize, among other places, what now
includes the New York Metropolitan region) received its corporate
charter. Initially only interested in the region to the extent that it
was presumed to provide access to the fabled Northwest Passage, and
thereby to the spices and silks of Asia, as the value of the plentiful
fish and furs of the New World became apparent, the Company sought to
secure it in its own right. When one considers the legendary reputation
for natural wealth the region enjoyed, one wonders what took them so
long.

Since at least 1609, when Henry Hudson sailed into
New York Harbor, chroniclers of the region consistently recorded that,
in addition to the abundance of fish, and the other riches, one could
even smell the sweetness of flowers at significant distances from the
shore. Although many would attribute this presence – among other things –
to some sort of natural chance, or happenstance, the random richness of
the land perhaps, recent studies reveal that what was formerly
conceived of as merely natural plenty was, in fact, the result of the
respectful economic and cultural practices of the indigenous people, the
Lenape.

Although they were distinct from the Lenape, a
similar eastern woodland culture – the Wampanoag people of Massachusetts
– reputedly shared the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving feast. And as the
centuries passed, and as the indigenous people of the Americas were
systematically annihilated or “removed” to reservations, it is
interesting to see the degree to which – in spite of their initial
antipathy – the Pilgrims’ religious fundamentalism would blend with the
commercial aggressiveness of their neighbors into the fundamentalist
commercialism, or commercial fundamentalism, that has become hegemonic
today. Along with its “Indian removal” policies, and its slavery-based
economy, its general exploitativeness, and its array of technical
wonders, as this commercial culture developed it managed to transform
(or, rather, to deform) the formerly bucolic land of the Lenape, and
others, into the toxic sprawl of traffic, industry, and garbage
presently polluting the planet. Unlike the mariners of Hudson’s time,
those who arrive in New York City these days hardly smell the scent of
flowers. Those not already inured to it are often overwhelmed by the
blend of car exhaust, and other toxic fumes, blanketing the region.

In light of these consequences of commerce, it is a
further irony that the pre-Reformation period’s compulsory consumption
(not to mention production) has become, in many respects, the rule
today. Instead of candles, and other votive objects, though, the
Thanksgiving ritual practiced across the country consists of purchasing
thanksgiving-related paraphernalia. Not only does this entail a
significant expenditure of money, time, and effort, as Thanksgiving
segues into Christmas these are followed by ever greater levels of
consumption. Unlike the consumption dictated by the priests of the
pre-Reformation world, however, in the post-Reformation world of thePanopticon (manifesting,
most notoriously these days, in the NSA’s pervasive surveillance), the
agent delivering commands is not only external, like the priest – it is
internal as well, often occupying the position of one’s own super-ego.

Following the Reformation-era shift that led from
priests serving as intermediaries to the divine, under the constant
possibility of surveillance by the all-seeing, people increasingly began
to police themselves. Unlike the laws that parceled the world into
plots of property (owned by a small number of owners), depriving people
of the common land and resources necessary to sustain communities (and
consequently compelling people to sell themselves to commerce to
survive), no specific law compels people to engage in such rituals as
buying and eating turkey. Nevertheless, people are taught, conditioned,
and pressured in varying ways, to conform to these standards of
behavior. And it is perhaps nothing more than a coincidence (albeit a
particularly odd one) that the Greek Goddess of compulsion, Bia, was
closely associated with the Greek Goddess Ananke – for Ananke, let’s not
forget, also happened to be the mother (the origin) of the Fates. And
the tripartite structure of the Fates not only corresponds extremely
closely to that of the Trinity, but the spinner, the measurer, and the
cutter of the Fates corresponds identically to the US Constitution’s
tripartite separation of powers structure, the law of the Order determining us all.

Beyond all of this, however, perhaps the largest
irony brought to mind by Thanksgiving (and its shadow, Black Friday) is
the fact that all of this buying and selling and consuming – that is,
commerce – is inimical to the ideal of community Thanksgiving ostensibly
celebrates. For commerce and community are diametrically opposed.
Indeed, whereas the former, the commercial, is essentially mercenary
(reducing all to buying and selling – to a price – and subordinating all
other values to the dictates of the market), the latter, community
(exemplified by the radically egalitarian societies of indigenous
people) is marked by the opposite of commerce; that is, not by buying
and selling but by sharing the common. To the extent that one
preponderates, the other is diminished. And as commercial fundamentalism
determines the distributions of the world (with its so-called free
trade agreements, corporate-bought legislatures, and other apparatuses),
nearly all social relations are replaced by commercial ones. Even the
concept of ‘neighborhood’ is being privatized and commodified. Although
the primary definition of neighborhood is a social relationship (a
neighborly, i.e. amicable relationship), its colloquial, everyday
meaning has become a section of a city. Influenced by commercial notions
of property, the social relationship designated by the term
neighborhood has largely been supplanted by commercial relations –
neighborhood is conceived of as real estate.

The virtually total subjection of social life to the
dictates of commerce has reached a degree of intensity that even the
Pope claims to be concerned about it. Of course, from his other remarks
it is clear that the Pope is not interested in the dissolution of the
superstitious ideologies and hierarchies that this economy depends upon.
Though the Pope may not approve of the commanders in your head
compelling you to do whatever capitalistic thing it is he disapproves
of, he would not eliminate these commanders so much as replace them with
his own – with the ministers of the Church. For, let’s not overlook the
fact that the Pope’s recent statements are less a departure than a
return to earlier Church concerns about poverty – words that, in the
pre-Reformation period, consistently honored and exalted the poor, yet
nevertheless managed to coexist with feudalism (that is, with lords and
landlords) pretty well, reproducing poverty for centuries.

Notwithstanding the above, and though social
relations based on mutual aid and trust (community) have been forced to
the margins of social life over the past few decades, this forcement has
been recently meeting increasing levels of resistance. Inseparable from
the legacy of the Occupy movement, the labor strikes and protests
planned by Walmart workers for Black Friday comprise just such an
instance of community resisting commerce.

Beyond its commercial elements (and the fact that it
derives from a rejection of commercialism), and the degree to which it
illuminates the conflict between community and commerce, it is also
worth reflecting on the genealogy of the word Thank. So central to
Thanksgiving, the word ‘thank’ is etymologically rooted in the word Think.
And when one thinks about the historical, imperialist horrors
associated with Thanksgiving – not to mention the contemporary harms our
commercial culture constantly recreates (from the mundane, everyday
forms of domination, like police brutality, to ecocide and wars) – one
would think that, instead of contributing further to the
exploitation and harm of that which we share in common (community), it
might make sense to not only refrain from the thoughtless consumption of
consumeristic rituals, but to refrain from reproducing the
exterminatory commercial political-economy ruling our lives entirely.

Not only should we support Walmart workers and others
struggling for a just distribution of the community, we should extend
these struggles. Not only should we recognize that the dictates of
community ought to restrict and determine the limits of commerce, we
should recognize that those things that people need to live well – that
are common to and commonly needed by all – should not be privatized.
Instead of being deformed into private things, they should be
transformed into public, common, community things. Moreover, we should
recognize that such things are what a community – a society – has an
actual duty of care to provide to itself (not to sell between
individuals, but to share among neighbors). If we gave it some thought,
we just might recognize that those entities that people need to live
well (nutritious food, housing, education, and the ability to govern our
own lives, among other things) are so valuable that they should not be
for sale at all.